Voxopolis, a three-dimensional city based on John Horton Conway’s Game of Life
Like its precedent, Voxopolis begins with a set of conditions and variables that, when implemented, require no further human input for its subsequent generations. Each new generation is based on its predecessor.
What is different now is that it is three dimensional plus it happens at multiple levels at the same time. The voxels inside one building change their state according to neighbour-checking rules but the plots containing the buildings do it as well at an urban scale with different variables like building type, height, occupancy etc.
But the really interesting point, where the structure of the city is getting complex, is that these various scalar layers interact with each other. The voxels influence the buildings, which in turn influence the urban structure and vice versa. The whole city is a complex relational network operating at different scales, from the large city scale down to the voxel scale.
Everything follows it's own rules but is also interconnected with the rest of the city and therefore informs and influences everything else as well.
As the G-City Project and the Attractive City project this was done as research project at the ETH in Zurich, at the chair of Computer Aided Architectural Design.
check out our movie as well on youtube!
as I can't post links yet simply go on youtube and look for voxopolis.
It's really nice video

Hope you like it!

JDD

That is pretty cool. Is the 3D output directly from Processing? Were the flyovers scripted in advance, or controlled interactively?

-spxl

Why don't you take an online applet Is it real time living


I don't know if you implement the real conway's GoL but i've implemented one with a 5*5 grid and with the rigth parameters the result is so impressive.

I've make a post here.
Try the "1" init key to see what i speaking about.

It maybe be give you an idea for adding other rules for your voxopolis living town.

yelele_eu wrote on Feb 9^th, 2010, 11:37am:



So the rules are not directly the GoL rules, they are adpated. For example for the building type as there are three different building types the rules have to be more complex already. You can specify the ideal neghbourhood of each building type. When a building gets built the neighbours are checked and according to these the chances for each building type ist calculated. But you can change these values as well when the programm is running via an interface.
Can you tell me how to make an online applet out of it

dominikZ wrote on Feb 9^th, 2010, 12:10pm:

What an excellent feature! Did you come up with that yourselves If not, do you have a link for a discussion about it / implementation

If you want to release your code (and I'm not suggesting that you do, or if you do, perhaps not so soon), you can post non-OpenGL sketches at http://openprocessing.org

Hy yelele_eu,

thanks for the advice but I actually know how to export and upload etc.
Just I don't know how to implement the script into a webpage but I will try to get it running the next days if there is time. There is the additional problem that next to actual screen there are as well two control panels which should be displayed next to the screen as well...

I've looked at your project, sure. Looks really nice! And this is running with the original rules of GoL?

I've been playing with some variations on Conway's GoL to simulate population growth/expansion on an urban environment. I think this engine works great on modelling buildings and their growth, but the videos on youtube don't make it clear about the dynamics controlling the appearance of new "neighborhoods". Is it also based on a variation of GoL? Thanks in advance!

Very impressive and inspiring.